A Very Possible Christmas Night
by Slipgate
Summary: A standalone story. There was more to a particular Christmas celebration than what we TV viewers got to see. My entry for WhiteM's "Snow Daze" holiday contest.


**Title: A Very Possible Christmas Night**

**Story summary: A standalone story. There was more to a particular Christmas celebration than what we TV viewers got to see. My entry for WhiteM's "Snow Daze" holiday contest.**

_**Disclaimer: The Possible family, Ronald Stoppable, and Rufus the Naked Mole Rat are property of Disney, and used here without expectation or ability to profit.**_

**~*~*KP*~*~**

**A Very Possible Christmas Night**

**by Slipgate**

James stood ready with the whisper-quiet vacuum (muffled from making sound with Space Center technology he helped develop) as Anne picked up the different packages from around the tree and set them temporarily in a stack on the coffee table. As Anne worked, James swiveled his head around looking for obvious things to pick up elsewhere in the room so that they wouldn't be caught in the vacuum.

"Well, after everything that's happened, we've set Ronald up for the night in the twins' room," James mused as his eyes looked toward the ceiling and his mind toward the bedrooms on the floor above.

Anne balanced herself with one hand on the coffee table as she stood up one last time with the last package she had to clear aside, and James started to run the vacuum just short of the base of the Christmas tree, attacking it from each angle. He once again thanked Chen and Ramesh mentally for the ability to do this while his kids were asleep without waking them up. Who knew they would figure out a modulating harmonics sound dampening material together? As his daughter would say, "So convenient, innit?"

"Hopefully the boys don't bother him too much," Anne said.

"Well," James said, grunting with exertion to get over a slight bump in the carpet, "they can be monkeys, but Ronald seems to have been able to handle them so far."

"Well, honey, with somewhat mixed success!" Anne countered as she began placing the gifts under the tree again. "Remember how Kimmy had to come home wearing one of that Shego woman's outfits that one time!" Satisfied that she had placed them just as they had been before, Anne stood up, and reached for her ready cleaning supplies to make the surfaces of the room shine, including the feather duster she began running along the mantelpiece with one hand as she briefly lifted photographs and knickknacks with the other.

"That wasn't Ronald's fault though," James said, "and Ronald and the twins managed to come together and make sure that Kimmie got back to herself after all."

James surveyed the room, deciding it looked spick and span. As Anne and he peered into the kitchen, they noticed that a mountain of plates was still in the sink, that the floor looked like it had some lemon square crumbs, a little dust, and… was that dropped silverware near one of the table chairs? On top of that, the serving tray for the Christmas turkey still had residue at the bottom _and_ the lemon square pan did too on the central kitchen table. In unspoken agreement, they collapsed into chairs facing the workload still ahead of them with huge sighs of exhaustion.

"You know, it was an exciting day, and I wouldn't have traded it for the world, but it was sure a _tiring_ day," James managed to get out after taking a breath.

"Well, honey, we're not as young as we used to be," Anne said sadly, her eyes flitting to a small picture hung on one kitchen wall of a _very_ young (so it seemed) Anne and James Possible not long after their wedding. "Kimmy and Ron have much more energy to do this traveling around the world than we do."

"You know and I know that there is no way we could leave things the way they were, though," Anne continued with a small smile, "it's just not the same for Christmas without Kim here. I hesitate to think what it would be like in three years if she's in college and can't get away because of some test or something she has to study for over the break."

"You're worried about three years from now in college," James said with a laugh evident in his voice, "I'm worried about when my Kimmie really _won't_ be a little girl any more, and she won't be _here_. She'll be with…" he paused for a long moment. Finally, he rose to his feet to continue working and said, almost in a whisper, "whichever man steals her away from me I guess."

Anne heard her husband clearly. "I wonder…" she replied, catching James' attention.

She continued, "Do you ever wonder, honey, who that might be?"

"Oh Dr. Possible, still your tongue! Still your tongue! I just told you I didn't want to think about who that might be!" James said, in one of his artificial (and adorable) huffs.

James held a hand out to her to help her up. "Up and at 'em, eh, Prince Charming?" she quipped.

"The story forgot the part where they lived happily ever after because they both did things for each other," James offered easily.

Anne rose to her feet, but before they entered the flatware frontier, Anne mused out loud as her eyes flitted to the ceiling. "You know, sometimes I wonder… and sometimes… I don't…"

James tracked her eyes to the bedrooms above, but didn't fully understand her statement. There was a strange, wistful expression on her face. He was about to ask her about the non-sequitur but seeing the mess in the kitchen again blasted it off the tip of his tongue before he could.

"Well, you know, we managed to spend the Christmas with Kimmie and we managed to get her back home here, and we managed to help her out. I'd say that was a successful day and worth the exhaustion we had, wouldn't you, Dr. Possible?" James quipped.

Returning her attention to her husband's face, Anne replied, "But of course, Dr. Possible." and kissed him on the cheek.

"And, you know, Kimmy wouldn't have been the same without Ron here," Anne added as they began their team effort on the dishes. They worked in silence and at low water pressure. Unfortunately, the material that had after some effort managed to silence the overall consistent wavelengths of a vacuum at a given setting was a crapshoot on a kitchen sink. Since different water pressures as well as different plate and sink materials would generate wildly different sounds, they had to be cautious as to not make enough racket to wake their little anaconda-wrestlers… or the other reckless kids.

James mulled that statement over, but could only nod as he grunted to get a particular piece of stuck-on food off.

"Well, all's well that ends well and all the kids are tuckered out. Considering how young they are I'm amazed _we're_ still awake, honey." he said, finally putting away the plates he had washed and Anne had dried, then turning to retrieve the tray and the lemon square pan. Noticing it, he bent to pick up the fork near one of the chairs. He wondered for a moment which kid might've left that, and then realized with chagrin that it was the chair he had sat in.

"It's a good thing you and me both got the next couple of days off from the Space Center and the hospital, isn't it, honey?" Anne agreed as she hid a small smile at her recognition of James' embarrassing silverware-related discovery.

He shot her a fake aggrieved look, washed the fork up quickly, and then settled in to work on the lemon square pan with her. "Tell me about it. I think I'm going to need the next couple of days just to recover from _this_ adventure. I might need another just to count as an actual break from _work_."

"Aww, honey, you know you're not _that_ lacking in energy," she said to him.

Once the kitchen was done… and a longing look had been leveled at the dishwasher which they'd silently agreed was both too loud and not thorough enough for them to use for everything they just did… the couple went into the next room on their list. There, James spotted the laundry hamper. He also spotted things that were most definitely _not_ in the hamper… and should be. As well, he saw the glint of water in the reflection off the tile floor.

"Oh honey, the twins tracked in some water when they tossed their dirty black tops into the hamper. Or I should say when they tossed without looking and missed." James said.

Anne picked up the tops, somewhat gingerly, and dropped them in the hamper. She went to retrieve her cleaning supplies.

"Honey?" James asked in confusion. "It's just water to dry up."

"It must have come from the Amazon when they wrestled that anaconda," Anne called back as she was fishing some supplies out of a little closet she had in the kitchen.

Once that was cleaned up, James found a small splatter of eggnog on a wall that had not previously been discovered. Anne gave him a look and he decided not to try to calculate how far his experiment with the machine earlier in the evening must have flung things. Instead, he took the cleaning supplies from her hands, kissed her cheek, and dutifully began scrubbing it off himself.

Anne decided to let him off the hook and changed the subject. "It was awfully nice of your mother to want to help with this cleanup, but by the time we got back here it was just not in the cards for her. If we're not as young as we used to be, certainly neither is she." Nana Possible had been especially distressed to leave her son and his wife to clean up because of the lemon squares she had served being part of the cleanup job. But Nana was exhausted, and James and Anne had hustled her off to bed (but not before thanking her again for what Ron called her "badical lemon squares"). Kim had given up her bed to her Nana, and was curled in a sleeping bag at the foot of it… much as Ron was in the twins' room.

They had wanted to give Ron a bed after what he'd done that day, but the twins' beds were too small, and he forbade any other offers or arrangements, saying he was fine with "sleeping bagging it" (his words). He deftly unrolled the sleeping bag and arranged it just right in the seconds when James was going to try to insist again, and just as quickly plopped down and seemed to fall instantly fast asleep.

Anyway, even if they were cleaning up a ridiculous war zone of a house, James and Anne didn't want any help. This was some time just for the two of them. Quiet. Peaceful. Domestic, but without anyone else to answer to.

Once the couple had finally, finally completed the cleanup, they tiptoed quietly to their master bedroom – an area even the twins understood as off limits and private – and fished around in the closet where they had hidden the extra presents. James and Anne Possible had worked hard recently (for which they appreciated their vacation all the more) but part of that had been in order to surprise Kim, Jim, Tim, and even Ron with more in the way of presents than they would have expected. Some of those presents were already laid out under the tree. Unlike previous years where they had known that "Santa" was actually "Mom and Dad," not all of the presents were already accounted for under the tree. They had put some under the tree for the kids to run the assumption that that was the extent of their presents. They had also done more purchasing than their kids had known about, and were going to spring a surprise on them in the morning.

They could already hear and imagine how the kids would react.

Kim would be like, "Mom, Dad? You guys really rock!"

The twins would be like, "Coooool! Let's get in our room and look inside them!"

And Ron? Ron would ask Rufus to open his, and then when he saw it, he would say, "Th-th-that's badical… I'm not gonna cry!" and then hug them.

As they set up the presents they had quietly tiptoed downstairs carrying armfuls of, James was still reflecting on the day's events. "Under the circumstances, honey, maybe Kim should go over to Ronald's place tomorrow to celebrate the last day of Hanukkah with his family? I mean, think of how much time Ronald spent here without his family, on account of Kimmie being his best friend."

"That's a wonderful idea, honey! Ron comes here so often, that his parents would probably appreciate a little acknowledgement."

Once the gifts were all set, Anne and James did a walk through the house, turning off various light switches when they were sure they were satisfied with each room. Thankfully all the family activity had been downstairs, so the upstairs was still as tidy as it had been when they had cleaned it up in the housecleaning they had done to prepare for today. Things had taken so long that neither Dr. Possible really wanted to look at a clock right now.

As they strolled up the stairs, Anne looked up and saw something that made her grip her husband's arm.

James was about to open his mouth when he turned to her but she was pointing upward.

Above them was a sprig of mistletoe.

James looked back at his wife with a smile, and then surprised her by wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning in. Before she could get out the "how" in "how about a kiss?" his lips descended on hers and his mouth closed around its treat.

There was a quiet intensity to the kiss. They were both (just barely) mindful of not making a lot of noise, but Anne did make a small, hastily muffled squeak of pleasure, and James did cut off the moan of a boy who had finally gotten to watch TV after finishing his homework.

James became aware that Anne's hands, which had been placed against his chest in her haste to find balance on the staircase, had risen slightly and curled up and over his shoulders just barely. His hands had pressed in, pulling her a little closer to him. He also felt, as she did little goldfish openings of her mouth to encourage him to open his, that she was leaning into him slightly, with the effect being that they were standing more even than when he'd leaned down toward her, or perhaps now he was the one leaned slightly back. It was hard to tell.

It was soft. It was silent. It was hesitant in that they didn't want to wake their kids or go plummeting down a staircase in what had probably been an ill-advised place for mistletoe. But it was intense… so intense.

Both parents had (for the moment) put aside all thoughts of Kimberly, Ronald, or the twins by the time they slowly disengaged. Anne's eyes opened and James looked into those striking blue eyes that he'd fallen in love with. She leaned her forehead against his, watching his twinkling brown eyes. "Shall we go to bed, Dr. Possible?" she breathed after a moment of mutual quiet observance.

"Let's find out how young we still are." he finally replied.

"Absolutely, Dr. Possible."

Hand in hand, they closed off the last light that had still been on, illuminating the staircase, as they went up the stairs, feeling and guiding each other by the warm sensation of their joined hands.

_**fin**_

**~*~*KP*~*~**

_Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to all. My thanks to you for reading this story. I hope you enjoyed it. I welcome reviews, good or bad, short or long, English or… English, and respond to all of them._

_**Author's Notes:**_

___**1)**__ You'll notice that I spell the diminutive of Kim in two different ways. This is intentional._

_**2)**__ For the purposes of this story, I imagine that Christmas Day will be the final day of Hanukkah, even though such things (in my research on the subject) are decided by the Jewish calendar and won't conform to the same days every year of the Gregorian calendar. I mean no disrespect to those of the Jewish faith – I just need to imagine this is a year where the last day of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day for the sake of a story point._

_**3)**__ My thanks to the advice, inspirations, and/or appreciated words of encouragement from _Pinky Jo Curlytail_, _Earl Allison_, _waveform_, _Michael Howard_, _screaming phoenix_, _Mr. Wizard_, everyone I'm forgetting at the moment, and anyone else who has ever reviewed me, favorited me or a story of mine, or set an alert on same. Thanks to _WhiteM_ for inspiring this story by running his contest. And thanks to you, _dear reader_, for reading it. You rock in surround._


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